When I recently saw that the antique Disney film Swiss Family Robinson was on the old movie channel I favor, I had to take a peek—after all, at 6 years old, I’d thrilled to its elemental (and elementary) charms at its theatrical release nearly 50 years ago. Thinking I’d only watch for a few minutes, I wanted to see if any of its hoary elements might still provoke a gasp̵—or, more likely, an unintended laugh.

Indeed, though the film is filled with Disney cheese, I gobbled the whole damn thing up, watching entranced from one cornball scene to the next. It struck me that a good story is a good story, even adorned with some fairy-tale frippery. In a nutshell, Swiss Family Robinson is the tale of a family shipwrecked on a small island, having to make a life for themselves amidst deprivation, harsh elements and direct threats.

You just have to go with the fanciful unfolding that the family (still-vibrant parents and three boys of variable ages and temperaments) is able to build a multi-level home in the jungle that would put many avant-garde designers to shame, and are able to fend off a band of murderous pirates with bombs made of coconuts, gravity-tripped logs and pit-trapped tigers—oh my!

Take Characters. Put in Situations. Add Emotions. Stir.
But the tale has what it takes. There is:

Danger and Loss – their boat and their dreams to move to a new country are dashed in a violent shipwreck scene, which they survive, only to wash up on an island populated with all kind of menacing beasts.

Discovery and Development – They work as a team to build their house, learn to scavenge for food, and explore the wilderness.

Desire and Romance – A pirate captive is freed, and he turns out to be a she, longed-for by both the oldest and middle boys, who get into a jealous (and amusing) rivalry.

Threat and Triumph – they are attacked by the pirates, and improbably vanquish them. Rescuers come, and mom and dad and most of the family decide to stay, because the life they’ve created is too good to leave.

All of this is mightily sprinkled with sentiment of the cloyingly Disneyish kind: a frightening depth of blondness in all the characters (well, they are Swiss), syrupy innocence, and some absolute absurdities: the island has pretty much every beast known to man on it, from tigers to elephants to ostriches to monkeys.

Even Cynical Bentleys Filmgoers Still Crave a Good Story
But yet, a 50-year-old movie still worked in my snide head, because the storytelling was still vivid, and it employed those paragons of story architecture: colorful (albeit one-dimensional) characters, conflict and partial resolution, add in colorful subplotting, tension, conflict and partial resolution, tension, all building to a satisfying, if sappy, denouement.

Writers, take notes (and pass the popcorn).

The Perfect Writer’s Martini

The perfect writer’s martini is the martini in your hand. I know, a variant of a cheap joke—but that doesn’t mean you should drink cheap martinis. I was always amazed at my parents’ liquor cabinet, because they bought the massive, Costco-sized bottles of broom-closet spirits before Costco ever put its big boxes on the landscape. The first sip ever allowed me of one of their motley martinis put my adolescent gag-reflex to yeoman use. I vowed never to drink such a molotov-cocktail concoction again.

But as most vows are made of pliant fibers, I bent. In the vow-bending, I learned that you can’t make a drinkable martini out of rubbing alcohol and reptile tears, such as my parents’ sad admixtures. Martini recipes are as controversial as health-care legislation, and as a parallel, you must take one side or the other.

I’m not speaking of whether you make a gin martini, of course. A martini is a gin martini. The philistines who advocate a vodka martini had to have been denied mother’s milk, or sunshine in the spring, or a glance at the underwear of a hoped-for love, and that suffered cruelty prompted them later in life to make woeful drinks. A vodka martini is an abomination; a flavored vodka martini is a trollop’s calliope song of tawdriness.

No, the side I’m talking about is whether you must marry, or at least flirt, with vermouth in your mix, adding a liveried footman to the big-chested general of your four-star gin. I say yes. (Though I admire the tale of Winston Churchill, who when once asked how much vermouth he would like in his martini, replied, “I would like to observe the vermouth from across the room while I drink my martini.”) Through resolute practice, sustained investigation and teary declarations, I doped out the perfect gin/vermouth ratio to be four to one. This calculation is also revealed by reverse magnetism on the Aurora Borealis and in the unreleased Dead Idea Scrolls of The Da Vinci code (signed edition – fine print).

Good Gin Is Not Sin
Get a good, stout gin, such as Tanqueray or Bombay, or if you’re of a more herbally tantalizing bent, try Junipero from Anchor Distilling. Ally that with a serious vermouth, such as Noilly Prat or Martini and Rossi if you must. (Both liquors should be chilled: gin in freezer; vermouth in fridge.) Ponder whether you want the James Bondian “shaken, not stirred” or the putative gin-bruising of the shaker. For me, it’s a matter of mood. I have both shaker and glass pitcher, and alternate between both. I’ve read of stir fanatics buying a specialty ice for their martinis, and using a specified number of cubes. That is zealotry that has no place in sporting drinking.

When I use the shaker (pulsating the infusion in several short plunges, and then a brief settling), I normally crush a percentage of the cubes so that there’s a few pleasant shards of ice doing the butterfly stroke on the martini’s surface. With the pitcher (stirred for 45 seconds or so in alternating circles), I detect a slightly colder result, though no more crisp (or less bruised) than the shaken. Pour into a nice, chilled martini glass of clear stemware—not one of those gigantic two-hand reservoirs seen in some boorish bars. With the pitcher, you will have to invest in a decent long-handled stirring spoon/wand and a strainer—Oxo makes a nice one.

Olives Dot All Your I’s
I prefer the standard small manzanilla olives with pimentos, though some Teddy Roosevelt-like souls will try those bulbous olives stuffed with jalapeno or even garlic. To me, you should seek your lunch outside of your glass. Three small olives will do, because after all, this is a writer’s martini: the “power of three” in writerly phrasings is acknowledged in literary circles everywhere. And why a writer’s martini at all? Because writers face daily death on the page, a loss of language, a spinning descent into fear and paralysis. A good martini is comfort for the terrors of the void and for poor punctuation.

So, pour and pleasure. It would be nice to have a companion in the room, say Nora Charles, to bat eyes with, but any comely, genial lass or laddie will do. One rule: never before breakfast. Enjoy.

[Bonus: Luis Bunuel's martini recipe]

Though I am a dinosaur, I do still need to flex the hard, bony plates of my skeletal system now and then, so I listen to the Grateful Dead, prime dinosaur music. The Dead’s repertoire runs through rock, blues, psychedelia, folk, space noodlings and even some jazz stylings. But the notion that Garcia might make a good short story writer comes from the sense that the Dead often do ballad-type songs, where there are characters—canny gamblers, seedy alcoholics, heady prophets, even the devil—who romp or stumble through the songs, coming to a good or bad end. Rumrunners and grifters are chewy elements for many a tale, written or sung.

Of course, Robert Hunter wrote many of the actual lyrics of those tunes, with Garcia as a foil, so it isn’t quite accurate to dub Garcia as the storyteller—more the sense of a writer lending the devil his deck of cards to deal a few hands. However, music is sonic storytelling, where a guitar riff or a piano trill can add storytelling elements of conflict, anger, and yearning that are beyond straight lyrics.

It’s interesting to think of artists stepping a bit out of their genre boundaries. Or perhaps step seven leagues from their profession, as Wallace Stevens from his insurance executive’s office and William Carlos Williams from his physician’s perch, both to the platforms of richly expressive poetry.

Garcia might have made a good candidate to produce a Vook: he could have included his paintings, music and lyrical scribblings. I read Bob Dylan’s autobiography, Chronicles a little while back, and was quite taken with the interesting phrasings and compositional structures of the work, done by an absolute artist, but not one encapsulated as a writer. Of course as a songwriter, few can touch him. Dylan’s book reminds me of the whimsy of the writing (and the artwork) of John Lennon, in his “John Lennon, In His Own Write” book. (I’ll probably draw the line at seeking out Lady Gaga coloring books.)

I do have a few Garcia ties; I wish they came with some embedded tunes and a USB port because the expressive shapes and colors undoubtedly tell a tuneful tale…

Just an appetizer to have something on the plate; actual nutritive posts will follow.

As Mark Twain’s adverstisements for his lectures would often state: “The doors will open at 7 o’clock, and the trouble will begin at 8.”  At one Grass Valley, CA talk, he promised that after the lecture that he would perform a series of “wonderful feats of SLEIGHT OF HAND, if desired to do so.” His “wonderful feats” involved drinking multiple shots of whiskey, leaving town suddenly without paying his hotel bill, and other exemplars of his character. So, this handbill is hitchhiking on the tippy-tails of the esteemed Mr. Twain’s swallowtail coat: The trouble, however haltingly, has begun.

But that guy is a hard act to follow; me, I’m going to string words together as well as I can, as soon as this site has the right color of chintz curtains. (Oh, I’ve got the whiskey thing down.)